Suck it up! Neato Is Ready to Kick Robot Vacuum Butt

Rather than going back to the drawing board every few years, iRobot has made subtle improvements on a basic design that leaves much to be desired. The Roomba you could buy today cleans in the same way that the Roomba did seven years ago. Why? Because iRobot is spending their time making some cool army and healthcare bots, not innovating the Roomba. That’s why a new company can come along and take advantage of the seven years of lost chances. That’s why Neato is going to explode onto the scene.

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Using this technique and its laser, the XV-11 is able to constantly find its position in the context of the room, and its able to compensate for changes in the environment. When you walk through a room the XV-11 is cleaning, it knows to avoid you. It can also avoid obstacles you place in its way and will go back and clean areas that become open when an object is removed. While you may be inclined to challenge the robot’s skills by maniacally placing chairs in its way, the intended application is that the robot can clean an entire area using straight lines and with a minimum of overlap.

Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

Since energy and mass can be converted back and forth (E=MC2), it’s only a matter of time before teleportation is real. 2010!

All this is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in the energy of any particle. The teleportation process allows you to inject quantum energy at one point in the universe and then exploit quantum energy fluctuations to extract it from another point. Of course, the energy of the system as whole is unchanged.
LightSail-1 is set to be the first starlight-propelled spacecraft and it is scheduled for the first test in about a year. The NYT article describes the first three planned tests by the Planetary Society (private donor funded, not NASA) and a bit of the history of solar sails. Inspiring. For the third flight, Dr. Friedman and his colleagues intend to set sail out of Earth orbit with a package of scientific instruments to monitor the output of the Sun and provide early warning of magnetic storms that can disrupt power grids and even damage spacecraft. The plan is to set up camp at a point where the gravity of the Earth and Sun balance each other — called L1, about 900,000 miles from the Earth — a popular place for conventional scientific satellites. That, he acknowledges, will require a small rocket, like the attitude control jets on the shuttle, to move out of Earth orbit, perhaps frustrating to a purist. But then again, most sailboats do have a motor for tooling around in the harbor, which is how Dr. Friedman describes being in Earth orbit. Because the direction of the Sun keeps changing, he said, you keep “tacking around in the harbor when what you want to do is get out on the ocean.” The ocean, he said, awaits.
LightSail-1 is set to be the first starlight-propelled spacecraft and it is scheduled for the first test in about a year. The NYT article describes the first three planned tests by the Planetary Society (private donor funded, not NASA) and a bit of the history of solar sails. Inspiring.

For the third flight, Dr. Friedman and his colleagues intend to set sail out of Earth orbit with a package of scientific instruments to monitor the output of the Sun and provide early warning of magnetic storms that can disrupt power grids and even damage spacecraft. The plan is to set up camp at a point where the gravity of the Earth and Sun balance each other — called L1, about 900,000 miles from the Earth — a popular place for conventional scientific satellites. That, he acknowledges, will require a small rocket, like the attitude control jets on the shuttle, to move out of Earth orbit, perhaps frustrating to a purist.

But then again, most sailboats do have a motor for tooling around in the harbor, which is how Dr. Friedman describes being in Earth orbit. Because the direction of the Sun keeps changing, he said, you keep “tacking around in the harbor when what you want to do is get out on the ocean.”

The ocean, he said, awaits.